


Here is Your Home Country

by ShanaStoryteller



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Dot Centric, F/M, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:11:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShanaStoryteller/pseuds/ShanaStoryteller
Summary: Dot tries to find firm footing in the wake of Miss Fisher's departure and her almost-wedding.Along the way, she finds Jack.





	Here is Your Home Country

**Author's Note:**

> title is from nizar qabbani: "The female doesn’t want a rich man or a handsome man or even a poet, she wants a man who understands her eyes if she gets sad, and points to his chest and say : “Here is your home country."

When Hugh had requested a transfer back to Melbourne two years after he left as a newly minted detective, two years since Jack had talked to him last, he’d hesitated. But his hesitation is an insult to all parties involved, and he has missed Collins, and his record is exemplary. There is no professional reason to deny him, and he won’t dare to ever speak of the personal one.

It’s the day before he’s set to arrive, and Jack is buried deep into his case files, trying to take his mind off it, when he hears Peters yell out, “No, please – don’t go in there!”

He sighs, expecting Burt or Cec, or even Jane if her university classes have let out early.

Instead, two years since he saw her last, Phryne Fisher walks into his office, exactly the same as when she left, just as beautiful and untouchable. “Jack,” she greets, sitting on the edge of his desk like she never left, leaning close to him and smiling. “Is that a murder case? For me?”

“Phryne,” he says, wide eyed and stunned, which is likely just how she wanted him. She’s smirking as she plucks his case file from his hands, and he glares as he tugs it back.

She’s frowning now, and honestly, she can’t just show up after a couple of years and expect he’ll let her start nosing around again, at least not without buying him a drink first. She reaches out a gloved hand, and he’s confused until she presses a finger against the silver band around his ring finger. “I see congratulations are in order.”

Ah. No one’s told her. He’d thought at least Mac might have talked to her, might have mentioned it. “Thank you.” He pauses, because he has to tell her, but considering how things were when she left, he wonders if he should start with explanations. Not that he owes her one. He doesn’t owe her anything, but it’s not like she won’t notice.

“Inspector!” Peters shouts, sounding a hair shy of panic. “Your wife is here!”

Oh, fuck. Well there goes that plan. He leans back in his chair and rubs a hand over his face.

“Oh, good, I’ll get to meet her!” Phryne says, sounding genuinely delighted, so there’s that at least.

“You forgot your lunch this morning, and I’ve been thinking about the gunpowder that was on the victim’s hand,” his wife says, stepping into his office with basket in her hands, which falls to the ground when she sees Phryne sitting on his desk, too close for respectability.

This is the first time he thinks he’s seen Phryne look legitimately shocked. “Dot?”

“Miss Fisher!” Dorothy cries, running forward to throw her arms around her. Phryne is laughing, holding her close and Jack peaks over his desk. What was going to be his lunch is now spilled all over his floor.

Oh well. Dorothy is crying while Phryne examines her ring, and they keep talking over each other, and Jack sighs and stands to put on his coat. “Ladies. Lunch?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Phryne says, but she’s still eyeing the file on his desk, clearly trying to see if she can get around him to get a closer look.

“Oh, good, we can discuss the case too,” Dorothy says, pushing past Jack to pick up the file and tucking it under her arm. “Just like old times. Hugh will be here tomorrow, I’ve already invited him to dinner, and of course you’re welcome too, Miss.”

“You have?” Jack asks, trailing behind them as they walk together arm in arm.

Dorothy flashes a smile at him over her shoulder. “And Mac, Burt, Cec, Jane, and Mr. Butler! And Now Miss Fisher is here, it’ll be just perfect. Hugh is bringing his girl.”

Jack searches his wife’s face, looking for any trace of jealousy or despair, but instead she just seems supremely satisfied with herself.

Well, if Dorothy has decided that this isn’t going to be awkward between all of them, who’s he to argue?

“We’ll get to the murder,” Phryne says, “but tell, me when did this happen? How did this happen?” She doesn’t sound angry or disapproving, thank god, since he knows that would crush Dorothy more than anyone else’s displeasure had.

Jack ducks his head to hide a smile, and Dorothy slows enough so that she can slip her hand in his. “Well.”

~

Neither expected it to happen like this.

Neither of them had expected it to happen at all.

Dot had called off the wedding after Hugh had just ran off on her like that, after he’d gone off on a dangerous assignment to get a better position an hour’s drive from her mother and her church and everything she’s ever known, and he hadn’t _asked_ her, and maybe that wouldn’t have bothered her before. But she’s not the same girl who entered Miss Fisher’s employ too afraid to even use the phone, who was so sure and so content to take the path laid out before her.

She doesn’t want to follow other people’s path. She wants to walk her own. And it breaks her heart, because she loves him, because how can she tell her mother, because he loves her and converted for her, but what he’ll do for her doesn’t matter if he won’t listen to her.

Dot calls off the wedding a week before. Miss Fisher tries to help, to get them back together, but in this Dot remains firm. She knows Miss Fisher wants her to be taken care of, that she doesn’t want to feel guilty running off to London and leaving Dot behind, but she’s fine. She’s a hardworking girl, she’s smart, and, thanks to Miss Fisher, she’s tough.

She’s going to be fine.

~

“It’s, it’s not very proper, is it?” Burt asks anxiously, even as Cec and Mr. Butler help move their things in. “People will talk.”

That does still bother her. But people have been talking about her for years, she doesn’t see how this is any different. “It’s just economical. Mr. Butler will be staying in Prudence’s house, but it’s not like any of us will fit there. She can’t hire all of us.”

“You know she’d take you on if you wanted,” Mr. Butler says, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows as he settles her favorite side table into the living room. It’s a little big for the space, but she’ll make it work. “She knows how useful you are, and how dear you were to Miss Fisher.”

“You really are okay with all this?” Burt asks with his arms crossed, anxiously chewing on the edge of his cigar.

Cec claps her on the shoulder. “Don’t mind him. Sharing an apartment is a great idea, especially while we all get on our feet, since we don’t have Miss Fisher to support us anymore.”

“I’m just worried about what she’ll think of – of how we live,” he says, stuttering over the last bit. “What with us being, you know, rough men and all.”

Dot shares a look with Mr. Butler. She’ll miss having him around all the time, the calm and steadying presence in the house. But Prudence and Jane need looking after just as much as Mr. Butler needs the work. Otherwise, she’d try to get him to move in with them too. She found her family these past couple of years, and she’s not willing to give any more people up, not after losing Miss Fisher, after losing Hugh.

“Burt, I lived with you two for three years,” she says as gently as she can manage. “I know exactly what you get up to. I know why Cec and Alice broke up, and it wasn’t anything like me and Hugh.”

Cec laughs and Burt pales and looks down, mumbling, “You don’t mind?”

She’d never minded, even when she was still afraid of telephone wires. Even when she didn’t understand it, and it was strange to her, she’s never been good at hating. And how could she hate Cec and Burt, after seeing them together how could she not understand? She tugs off her glove so she can press her bare hand to his jaw until he moves his face enough that she can look him in the eye. “What’s there to mind? I only looked at apartments with two bedrooms for a reason, after all.”

He swallows and looks away from her, eyes shining. She goes on her tip toes so she can press a gentle kiss to his cheek. She won’t be another person in his life to reject him. Burt doesn’t talk to his family anymore, but that’s their loss, and Dot won’t let it be hers.

“Time to move my sewing machine up,” she says cheerfully, turning back around, pretending she doesn’t see the way Burt reaches for Cec’s hand.

Mr. Butler smiles at her. “Very good, Miss.”

~

Once she stops being terrified, driving isn’t that hard.

“How’s it compare to your sewing machine?” Cec asks from the passenger seat, laughing as they speed down the countryside. It’s safer learning out here than in the city - less things and people for her to hit.

Burt pokes his head in between them. “Hey, do you want to slow down here? No need to speed through your first time. The road ain’t going anywhere.”

She and Cec look at each other, grin, and then she presses down on the gas. Burt is flung against the back of his seat with a yell, and they’re laughing as she swerves around a puddle. They just washed the cab after all, it wouldn’t do for her to be getting it dirty all over again.

It’s without a doubt far less complicated than her sewing machine.

Take that Hugh Collins.

~

Mac isn’t surprised that Phryne doesn’t keep in touch. It’s not her style, not really, she likes being able to slide in and out of people’s lives, of her own life. She’s sad to see her go, of course, but she’s surprised that she stayed in Melbourne as long as he did. She’ll be back. That’s the thing about Phryne. She’s pretty good about coming home, eventually.

She doesn’t think much of Phryne’s strays until Dot is in her exam room, a girl who looks barely more than half her age huddled behind her. “Doctor,” she says, chin high even as she trembles. “I need a favor.”

“Okay,” she says, eyebrows pushed together. “What’s wrong?”

The girl starts crying, and Dot pulls her forward, an arm around her shoulders. The girl’s hands are splayed across her stomach. Ah.

“Family planning,” she says, and Mac’s lips curl up in the corners.

“I can’t help with that myself,” she says, “but I know someone who can.”

After, when the girl is exhausted and sleeping, Dot sitting at her bedside, Mac leans back against the wall and asks, “How do you know her?”

She doesn’t ask for her name, and Susan hadn’t asked either. They don’t usually want to give names, and it doesn’t help anyone to have them.

“She sells fish in the market,” Dot says quietly, pushing her hair back from her face. “She was so scared. She’s not seeing anyone, Doctor.”

Ah. Susan hadn’t mentioned any evidence of rough treatment, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. “I’m surprised you brought her to me,” Mac says. “Pleased, don’t get me wrong, but surprised.”

Dot pauses, and she doesn’t look at her as she says. “She’s so young. Too young. She can barely feed herself, never mind a baby, and with no one to help her - they’ll starve, or get sick, or something worse. She’s Jane’s age. It’s not like - if it happened to me, I’d keep it,” she says, determined. “But she’s not me.”

Well, well, well. What a pleasant surprise. Maybe Mac should have spent more time talking to her and less time eating her cooking. “What will you tell your priest?”

“I’ll tell him I saved a baby and a girl from a short life of misery,” she says firmly. “I’m not ashamed of this. I won’t be ashamed of this.”

The latter seems more true than the former, but her steely eyed determination will get her there eventually. “Do you want a drink?”

“Please,” she sighs.

She’s more of a wine than a whiskey girl, but Mac has worked with less.

~

Cec loves living with Dottie. He and Burt manage, but neither of them have a woman’s touch. Besides, it’s nice having someone else around his age to gang up on Burt with, and Dottie’s the best straight man he could ask for.

She cooks and cleans, and they take the smaller bedroom even though there’s two of them, because she needs the space. She has her sewing machine and her desk for all her work on the magazine, and maybe she started out just answering the Artemis letters, but she keeps doing pieces for other things too, cooking and cleaning, and she even does a piece on learning to drive where she heaps praise on her anonymous instructors - meaning them - and Burt pretends to rolls his eyes, but he buys a copy and keeps it at the bottom of his chest in their room.

They do what they can, doing the dishes after dinner and making grocery runs and paying for more than their fair share, since they’re not the ones that have to cook them, and Cec trusts that Dottie isn’t the same quiet woman she was before, that if they’re being inconsiderate or unfair, she’ll tell them. But they’re trying really hard to be neither, and Dottie is too, spending long nights at the office and going out for dinner with the editor of her magazine, doing her best to give them alone time.

One time she’d walked in on Burt leaning up on his tip toes so Cec could kiss him - fully clothed and chaste as anything - and she’d blushed and apologized, but Burt hadn’t been able to look at her until she’d taken a newspaper and whacked him over the head with it, saying she’s wasn’t naive, and this was their home too. They should kiss wherever and whenever they pleased.

They hide it everywhere, from everyone. But she was adamant that they didn’t have to hide it from her.

“But what about your book?” Burt asks, cautious still, “I’m pretty sure your good lord don’t approve of that.”

Her eyes narrow. She walks away, and for a moment Cec is worried she’s walking away from everything, but then she comes back holding her bible. She walks up to Burt and thumps him in the chest with it, and he has to scramble to catch it before it falls to the ground. “It’s just a book. You’re here. You’re real. And you’re in love. If my lord takes issue with it, then he doesn’t deserve me. Or you.”

It’s the first time Cec has seen Burt cry in front of someone that wasn’t him.

It’s one thing for Miss Fisher to not care about their sort, because she does lots of things that people don’t care for, but Cec knows it’s different for Burt to hear it from Dottie, who’s just like the traditional, religious family he left behind, except for the part where she loves them, and they didn’t.

He _loves_ Dottie. He’d cared for Miss Fisher too, but it’s different. Miss Fisher had been a whirlwind, not like anyone else, a natural disaster or a phenomenon, but less like a real person. Dottie’s familiar. She’s more than a person. She’s a home.

~

Jack doesn’t see Dorothy for three months after Phryne leaves, after Hugh takes the job and promotion and moves away a bachelor. He had no reason to, had no idea what he would even say to her when he saw her, when she’d lost so much, when he’d lost so much. He believes Hugh is a good man, and would have made a good husband, but he understands why she broke off their engagement.

In hindsight, that’s probably not something he should have told Hugh. He hasn’t heard a word from his former constable in the months he’s been gone, and really he only has himself to blame.

It turns out what he ends up saying to her is, “This is a crime scene, Miss Williams.”

“Yes, the dead body had given that impression,” she answers, and he has to suppress a smile. It’s almost something Phryne would say, except that where she would be carelessly mocking, Dot is serious, like she’s affirming an observation. She startles, then looks up, “Oh, Inspector! How are you?”

How is he? Tired. Overworked. Lonely. “I’m wondering what you’re doing here. How you’re here, in fact, considering I had them secure the premises. Or at least I thought I did.”

“Well, there was no one at the back door,” she says reasonably, “and I was just passing by – I was going to make chicken for dinner,” she holds up a basket with a large parcel wrapped in butcher paper as evidence, “I’m living with Burt and Cec, just for the rent, of course. And because my mother is still refusing to speak to me, but, well, that’s not the matter at hand. I stepped on some glass, and some more glass, and it led me here,” he follows her gaze to the shattered window, where the body was supposedly thrown through early this morning. “Only it’s strange, isn’t it? Because the glass that I was stepping on was clear and clean and new, and this one in the window is all yellowed. I can’t even find any of the glass from this window on the ground inside, it’s all the same clear kind. Do you think the window was already broken when they put the body through, or that they smashed the window themselves and for some reason felt the need to clean up the mess?”

His eyebrows are creeping along into his forehead. “Are you looking for a job as a detective, Miss Williams?”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she scolds. She’s completely unaffected by the dead body between them, but what else can he expect, really, when she’d spent so long chasing after Phryne from crime scene to crime scene. “I just noticed and thought it was strange, is all. You should post a constable on the back door.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he says, and he’s smiling. When’s the last time he smiled?

She shifts the basket from one arm to the other. “Well, I suppose I should be going. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed anything.”

“Good evening, Miss Williams,” he says, and tries to tamp down on the swell of disappointment.

He must not do a very good job of it, because she hesitates, then says, “Would you like to come for dinner, Inspector?”

Yes. He’s missed her cooking. He’s missed talking to people who don’t work for him. “I do have a murder to solve,” he points out, because this feels weak, he feels weak.

“Well,” she says, “it’s not he’s going anywhere, and you have to eat.”

He cracks a smile, one that gets a little wider when it’s greeted by Dorothy’s grin. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

“You can’t,” she says, pulling out her notebook and scribbling down an address. “Here, eight o clock.”

“Eight o clock,” he echoes, watching her slip out the back.

He ends up running late against his best efforts, but he brings a bottle of wine for the trouble. She’s living in a truly terrible part of town, but Cec and Burt probably feel right at home, and it’s not like anyone can accuse Dot of being delicate or unable to handle herself, not with everything she’s been through.

“Inspector!” she greets, beaming as she throws open the door, her apron tied tightly behind her waist. “Cec and Burt had a job, so we’re on our own. I hope you don’t mind.” She notices the bottle in his hands. “How thoughtful!”

“A job?” he asks, handing over the wine. He tries not to sound too doubtful.

He steps inside and is immediately hit with the smell of something delicious. His own lackluster attempts at cooking really can’t compare with Dorothy’s meals.

She sighs, walking over to the cabinet. “They’re not sure what to do with you, now that Miss Fisher isn’t here to get them out of any trouble they’d get in. It’s more than self preservation though. They don’t want to put you in awkward position, is all.” She pours them each a generous glass of wine.

“Are they doing anything I should be worried about?” he asks, then regrets it. This is dinner with a friend, not an interrogation.

Phryne would have given him a glib answer, something to throw him off the scent and that told him nothing at all. But Dorothy frowns and is silent for a long moment before saying, “No, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t do anything to upset me, and if doesn’t upset me, I don’t think it’s anything you’d worry about.”

Fair enough. He takes a sip of the wine before asking, “What about you?” She’d gained a lot of skills while working with Phryne, but he’s not sure how many are applicable to more mainstream types of employment. But it’s not like this apartment is expensive either.

“I work for the Ladies’ Journal,” she says proudly. “This is a secret, so I’m trusting you Inspector, but I’m the new Ask Artemis!”

He raises a glass and says, “To the prettiest matron aunt that magazine has ever had.” He pauses. Was that a strange thing to say? Should he not have said it?

Dot laughs, and he’s not sure if the flush on her cheeks is from the wine or his words. She clinks her glass against his, takes a sip, then asks, “So, how are you? Do you want to tell me about the murder? I’ve found I don’t get into nearly as many conversations about corpses and murders these days as I did before.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he asks, mouth beginning to water as she makes plates for the both of them.

She shrugs. “It can get boring. Did you figure out what was going on with the glass?”

He tells the story in between bites, and Dorothy is attentive and smart, able to pick up on all the things he doesn’t say and offering several legitimately clever pieces of commentary that he wishes his constables could come up with, but he knows it’s not a fair comparison. Not many people have had her training. He keeps meaning to leave, half rises from his chair or says it’s getting late a half dozen times, but he keeps drifting back to her and continuing the conversation afresh.

He goes back for dinner to talk over the case three more times before it’s solved. He’s glad they’re done, but he’s also worried because this means he no longer has a built in reason to see Dorothy, which, if he’s being honest with himself, is most of the reason he’s over there.

It’s nothing uncouth, nothing to be ashamed of. He knows her. He doesn’t know if he’d say they were friends, not before everything, but he thinks they could be. And he’s rather short on friends.

He’s writing up his report on the glass case, mulling it over, when he hears shouting outside of his office.

“-get your hands off of me, and get me the Inspector!”

“The only thing you’ll be seeing is a jail cell if you keep this up, so scram,” Constable Peters orders, scowling.

“Burt,” he says, and they all pause.

Constable Peters starts, “Sir, I was just-”

“Is something wrong with Dorothy?” he asks. Maybe that part of town is too rough for her. Not that he’d ever tell her that.

“Dorothy, huh?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. Jack just raises an eyebrow. That’s her name. “Nah, she’s alright. She wanted me to invite you to dinner tomorrow. She has a deadline, otherwise she would have came herself, and I was around.”

It’s a struggle to keep himself from smiling. “I see. Will you and Cec be joining us this time?”

“I’m starting to think we better,” he says, and then walks out of the station.

Constable Peters clears his throat. “So, is Dorothy – is she Hugh’s Dottie?”

“Miss Williams is a person, and belongs to no one,” he says sharply. “Don’t you owe me a report?”

Peters swallows and says, “Yes, sir.”

The next night he shows up with a bottle of wine. Cec and Burt are already seated at the table, legs pressed together as they argue. “Should I bring something else?” he asks as he hands her the bottle. “I know you don’t drink much.”

“Can you cook?” she asks, smiling at him over her shoulder as she pulls the cork out.

He shrugs off his coat and puts it on the hook. “Not well.”

“Bake?”

“Even worse than my cooking,” he confides.

She’s smiling at him as she pours the wine and passes the glasses around. “Well then, wine it is. I’ve been doing plenty of new things recently, this is just one more.”

“To new things,” he says, holding up his glass.

A blush spreads across Dottie’s face, but she dutifully taps her cup against his.

~

Mac doesn’t have a lot of friends. She’s prickly, to put it lightly, and even when people like her, she doesn’t tend to like them.

She’s glad for her weekly visits with Dot. She’s even started bringing her on her rounds sometimes as her assistant, because she’s so good at putting all those frightened girls at ease. And why shouldn’t she be? She used to be one of them.

“I brought lunch!” she says, bursting into her exam room. She wrinkles her nose at the corpse on the medical table. “Maybe we should eat somewhere else.”

“What, don’t like the smell?” she asks, then gets a good look at the size of her basket. “Dot, I don’t think it’s physically possible for us to eat all that. Unless this is an experiment in the capabilities of our bodies in our own hubris, in which case I’ll bring my notebook.”

She shakes her head. “Oh no, some of this is for Jack. I’m going to swing by the station after here.”

“Jack,” Mac echoes, raising an eyebrow. “Since when do you two get along?”

“We’ve always gotten along,” she says, “now we’re just spending more time together. Are you coming or not? That woman has clearly already spoiled, and if I stand here much longer this food will too.”

Well, when she puts it like that.

~

Burt is thrilled when he finds a new but broken record player in a dumpster and manages to fix it. He’s so proud of it, so of course they use it all the time, and it’s playing when Jack shows up at their door.

Cec has dragged Burt to his feet and is swanning him around their small living room in a parody of a dance. Burt stumbles when he sees Jack, but Cec doesn’t pause, so he has no choice but to keep dancing.

He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize this was a party.”

She rolls her eyes and closes the door behind him. “Don’t be silly. Burt fixed this all my himself. Isn’t that delightful?”

“Delightful,” he echoes. He hangs up his own coat and jacket and holds out a hand. “A dance, Miss Williams?”

If she dances with him, dinner will get burned. “I don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you,” he says, still holding out his hand, waiting for her to take it. She doesn’t have to. She can laugh and go pull dinner out of the oven and that would be fine. It would be what she would have done a couple months ago.

She’s not the same woman as she was a couple months ago.

“Don’t get upset if I step on your feet,” she warns, placing her hand in his.

He pulls her close, his other hand on her waist while she clutches his shoulder. “I think I’ll live,” he says, smiling down at her, warm and soft, and looking at her in a way no man has ever looked at her. In a way that Hugh never looked at her. Like he’s charmed by each bit of her, and frightened of none of it.

Hugh loved her, she thinks. But he loved the idea of her more, the woman she was when they met more than the woman she became.

Jack likes the new parts of her. He appreciates her cooking and her schedule and never tells her what she should or shouldn’t do, he doesn’t get upset when she asks about his cases or try to hide things from her. He smells like soap and something comforting, and she has to resist the urge to bury her face in his chest and just breathe.

~

Cec knows what’s happening. He’s been in her shoes before.

He knows what it’s like to fall in love with an older man.

But Dottie doesn’t, and she’s only over dated Collins, and the Inspector isn’t Constable Collins, not anything close. He’s the type of man that plenty of people fall for, and Cec wouldn’t worry about it too much, it’s normal for Dottie to get a crush, it happens to everyone.

Except.

It’s obvious the Inspector likes her too.

Cec doesn’t even think he’s aware of it, the way he looks at her and smiles, the way he leans closer to her and laughs at her ridiculous stories from her day at the magazine. He didn’t use to look like that around Miss Fisher. He looked at her like she was a siren, and he was Odysseus, being called over the side of the ship into the waves.

He rather likes reading. Sometimes, when Burt can’t sleep because of nightmares, Cec will stay up and read to him. He’ll even do funny voices until Burt lets out a watery laugh.

He’s not sure what to do about it. He’s not sure if there’s anything to do about it. Dottie’s an adult, and the Inspector’s a good man, and it doesn’t seem like it will do anyone much good to make a fuss over it all.

Well, he does love Dottie, so he’ll give them some time. But if the Inspector doesn’t figure out that he’s in love with her by then, then he might just have to intervene. Just a little, just enough to nudge things along.

~

Dot has never thought of Jack as anything but Hugh’s boss and Miss Fisher’s friend. He’d seemed stern and imposing, except when he didn’t, when he went all gentle and sometimes concerned whenever he thought someone wasn’t looking. Mostly at Miss Fisher, but at lots of other people too, at Hugh and his ex-wife and Jane, at victims and polite little boys on the sidewalk wearing clothes with more holes than cloth.

More and more, she’s noticed him giving her those looks.

She tells herself it doesn’t mean anything, because it doesn’t. Well, it means he cares for her, that they’re friends, and that’s all that matters.

Sometimes, she thinks about what it would be like to kiss him.

She feels guilty as soon as she thinks it, because she’s only ever kissed Hugh. It’s just that Jack is so tall, with his big hands. She thinks he would be a good kisser.

~

About one month after he becomes their near permanent dinner guest, Cec walks into the police station. Which isn’t unusual in and of itself, but then he closes the door Jack’s office and says, “Are you going to do something about Dottie?”

He raises an eyebrow. “How so?” Does he mean the potato kick she’s been on, trying to test recipes for the magazine? Because he’s not going to complain about that. At some point she’s going to run out of new ways to make potatoes, but until then he’s not planning to say anything to jeopardize it.

Cec stares at him for a long moment, then snorts and shakes his head. “You know, the boys on the docks call her your miss.”

He’s glad he’s sitting, because otherwise he thinks he would have had a rather hard time to keep standing. “Excuse me?”

“She doesn’t mind,” he continues, “Burt offered to knock some heads together until they stopped. But. She doesn’t mind.”

Jack doesn’t have an answer to that, but Cec doesn’t wait for one, instead leaving just as suddenly as he came.

Jack’s not an idiot. He’s a grown man. He knows what it’s like to want someone, to like them, to care for them. He knows what it means that he can’t help but smile when he sees Dorothy, that he likes the feel of her in his arms, that he wants to hear about her ridiculous gossip from her work, that he wants to tell her about his day, how happy he is that he doesn’t have to censor himself with her because she’s already seen it all.

She’s beautiful, and kind, and if she’s not the type of woman he usually falls for - well, maybe Dorothy isn’t the only one experiencing new things. Phryne had understood him, but she hadn’t been something steady for him to hold onto. Rosie had been steady, but hadn’t understood him, had grown frustrated and unsatisfied with him, with his choices and his life when he had returned from the war a different man from the one she’d married.

Dorothy is both. She's perhaps the steadiest person he knows, but she doesn’t flinch away from any part of his life, she understands its realities and pains better than most civilians, be they man or woman.

Who can blame him for falling for her?

That was all fine when it was just him, just his problem. He’s old and tired, he’s not religious and he’s not someone her mother or her church would approve of, so he’s ignored it. His relationship with Phryne had been a great primer in how to push aside his own emotions.

But Cec wouldn’t play a trick on him, wouldn’t lie to him. Not about this, when if it was a lie it had the potential to hurt Dorothy, which is something neither Burt nor Cec would ever do.

He’s not one for waiting around. Life’s too short for that. He’d only spend a few days wrestling with himself before he told Phryne he was in love with her, and that’s when he knew she would never feel the same way, not like he did, when he knew that the way Phryne loved was true and good but not type of love he wanted or needed.

He taps his fingers on the desk, thinking about all the reasons this is a terrible idea, about how he could lose this fragile peace that he’s finally found.

“Fuck it,” he says, getting to his feet. Uncertainty is worse to him than anything else.

~

Dot leaves the office and ignores the way her pulse races to see a familiar silhouette waiting for her. “Jack,” she greets, “what are you doing here?”

He offers her his arm, and she settles her hand in the crook of his elbow. She can feel his warmth seeping all down her side. “I wanted to see you.”

She flexes her fingers against his arm, trying to hide how pleased that makes her. “Oh?”

“You know,” he starts, and she frowns. She looks up at his face, and he’s looking straight ahead as they walk, instead of looking down at her. “I’m fourteen years older than you.”

“I know that,” she says, because she does. Almost all of her friends are older than her.

“Does that bother you?” he asks.

She’s so confused. “Why would it?”

He stops walking and turns to look at her. “I’m not – I don’t go church on Sundays, Dorothy.”

“Neither do Cec or Burt or Mr. Butler or Mac,” she says.

“Yes, well,” he pauses. He raises a hand, slowly so that she has plenty of time to move away if she wants, but of course she doesn’t. He cups her jaw, his thumb against her cheek and his fingers pressed behind her ear. She can’t breathe. He leans forward, and is he – here, on the street, where anyone could see them? But he doesn’t kiss her lips, instead leaning forward just enough to lightly press his warm, dry lips against her cheek.

He pulls back, searching her face, waiting. He frowns and starts to step away, but Dot reaches out and grabs the front of his jacket, not quite able to bring herself to pull him closer, not in public like this, but not wanting him to go any farther away. “I don’t,” her voice catches, and she has to swallow before she continues. “I don’t mind.”

He looks at her, and slowly his frown morphs into something softer. “Are you quite sure of that?”

She’s not dumb. She knows what he’s really asking is – are you sure of me?

Dot feels a surge of – something, anger or stubbornness, a desire to prove something, to Jack or to herself. She ignores that they’re in the middle of public street, there’s no one around, no one to see or judge her. And even if there were – plenty of people are going to judge her for this. But she wants him more than she cares about their opinions.

She tugs Jack closer, and he stumbles, not expecting it, but she pulls him down and leans up to kiss him, hungry and terrified. It’s the most daring thing she’s ever done that wasn’t for someone else’s benefit. He doesn’t move for a moment, then his arms are around her waist, pulling her close and tipping back his hat so he can kiss her at a better angle.

When they part, he’s still holding her close, and she’s hot all over and her heart is beating in her ears. “I’m sure.”

~

When Dot comes home with a grin so wide it looks like it hurts and bruised lips, Burt just sighs. “I don’t suppose you’ve been secretly seeing some sort of nice boy?”

She blinks and Cec elbows him in the side. “Shut up. You finally make a move on your Inspector, Dottie?”

“A nice girl doesn’t kiss and tell,” she says primly, but then erupts into giggles, so that’s a yes.

“You let us know if he gets handsy,” he says, “we’ll throw him right in the river.”

Cec groans, but Dot knows him, so she only smiles and says, “Thank you.”

She hears all the things he doesn’t say. He’s already had to watch one copper not treat her properly, and he won’t sit by and do it again. Hugh hadn’t even been inappropriate or demanding, but he’d constantly treated Dot as less capable than she was.

He hopes the Inspector won’t do that. And if he does, well. He’s been locked up for worse reasons than punching a copper.

~

Jack doesn’t go shouting it from any rooftops, but he doesn’t bother to hide anything either. He has nothing to be ashamed of. He refuses to be ashamed of Dorothy.

He gets a lot looks at the station, all the people who knew Dorothy as Hugh’s girl, people who had been invited to their wedding that had never come to pass. She has to notice the way people look at her, look at them, but she doesn’t act like it. She brings baked goods to the station and sits in the chair next to his desk, smiling and laughing.

He thinks it’s fine. Then he’s running late to meet Dorothy for lunch because of another murder, and it doesn’t make any sense, he can’t wait to tell her about it. But he cracks open the door to the station just in time to hear someone say, “Collins wasn’t high up enough for you, so now you’ve got your claws into the Inspector? I can only assume the Deputy Commissioner is next, since you’re so determined to sleep your way to the top.”

The wave of absolute rage that washes over him probably should have been expected, but for a moment it leaves him breathless. How dare someone talk like that to Dorothy? How dare one of his constables talk to anyone like that, never mind the woman he’s dating?

He pushes the door open, and he’s expecting Dorothy’s tears, or her shock, but instead she just raises an eyebrow and says coolly, “It’s a shame you can’t do the same, Constable, since you’ll certainly never climb the ranks on merit.”

His anger leaves him like wind leaving sails, and instead he has to tamp down on a smile. “Dorothy. Constable.”

“Jack,” she says, while his constable’s face drains of all color. “We’re late.”

“Sorry,” he says, staring at his constable and watching him become more and more panicked.

Dorothy crosses the room and takes his arm, guiding him back inside. “We won’t get there any faster by standing here.”

He sighs, but follows her outside. He raises an eyebrow as soon as they’re outside and she squeezes his arm. “You should hear what some of the grandmothers at church call me. They could give that boy lessons.”

“Sorry,” he says, because this is because of him, because she’s with him.

“Don’t be. I made my choice, and I’m happy with it,” she tells him, and that makes a slow ball of contentment unfurl in his chest. “We do need to hurry though, I have to be back at the office in forty minutes.”

~

With Hugh, it had been a lot of time at the pictures and walks at the boardwalk.

With Jack, it’s different.

They go to the pictures sometimes, and Dot enjoys snuggling into his side, his arm around her shoulders, but it’s not often. Mostly it’s her bringing lunches and dinners to his office, nosing through his cases and talking things through. Some of this stuff makes her squeamish, but she has an iron stomach after her time with Miss Fisher. She’s not Miss Fisher, she doesn’t go looking for trouble, but she won’t be Rosie either, won’t be left behind, so sometimes she’ll go with him to crime scenes and take notes like she used to do for Miss Fisher, and she’s a fair hand better at it then his constables.

He even starts going to church with her on Sundays, even though he doesn’t care for it, because he knows it makes her happy. Her priest is beside himself and she’s pretty sure her mother faints when she walks in with Jack on her arm, older and divorced and rumored to be involved with her former boss. She doesn’t care.

Sometimes they go driving together in the country, Jack in the passenger side, watching her and grinning as she maneuvers his car around every pothole and puddle. He sits in her tiny bedroom and goes over cases as she sews, or sits in her kitchen and steals bites of whatever she’s baking. He sometimes watches her with this low, possessive heat that makes her overly aware of her body, of the way her dress hangs or the curls low on the back of her neck. But he never makes the first move, always waits for her to go to him, to sit in his lap or tip his head back to kiss him.

His kisses make her feel like she’s drowning. They’re deep, and languid, and sometimes it feels like he’s trying to devour her. She thought that it would frighten her, but it doesn’t, instead she just pushes herself closer and focuses on the pressure of his fingers digging into her waist to keep from completely losing her head. Nothing about their relationship is proper, but she can’t make herself anguish over being proper when instead she can choose to be happy.

They’ve been dating for six months, six months of Jack in her apartment laughing at Burt and Cec, six months of him helping Jane with her English homework whenever she’s over, six months of Mr. Butler’s soft smiles and Mac’s indulgent eyerolls and everyone else’s stark, cutting disapproval.

“Do you mind?” she asks, sitting next to him on the couch. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and his shoes are off, his hair messed up and tie loose from her hands, even though now they’re just reading.

He tears his eye from his report and raises an eyebrow. “Mind what?”

“That I’m a – that we don’t,” she stops herself, blushing. Kissing him is one thing. It’s wonderful and exhilarating. But kissing is all they do, all she’s ever done.

“No,” he says firmly. “I respect your choices, Dorothy, I know who you are and I’m not asking you to be anyone else. I’ll wait until it’s appropriate.”

Until it’s appropriate? Until – “Are you planning to marry me, Jack?”

He goes tense all along her side, and she regrets asking, she should apologize and maybe try to distract him with more kissing, but he clears his throat and says, cautiously, “I wouldn’t have – I wasn’t going to risk our friendship, if I wasn’t – I wouldn’t have begun this, not with you, if I wasn’t intending to keep it. It’s not – I don’t mean to pressure you into anything, I understand it’s one thing for you to be stepping out with me and quite another to marry an older divorced man–”

“Yes,” she interrupts.

He cuts himself off, blinking at her like he doesn’t understand what she’s just said. “Excuse me?”

She and Hugh dated for two years before he asked her, before she said yes. But she’s known Jack for so long, and he knows and understands her in a way she doesn’t know if any other man ever will, accepts her religion and her traditionalism, and also accepts all the ways she’s thrown those aside, even though she keeps both of them close to her chest. He doesn’t try to control her, or limit her, and she lives for his smiles, his laughter, for the way that he forgets to be exhausted around her even after a long day.

She’s more sure of Jack now than she ever was of Hugh.

“Yes,” she repeats. “If you’re asking now, or if you plan to ask later, that’s my answer. Yes.”

He looks at her for a long moment, unmoving, then he’s grinning and pulling her into his lap, not kissing her, just wrapping his arms around her, just pressing his forehead to her shoulder and breathing.

He doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need him to. She just kisses the top of his head and tries not think too much of what her mother will say.

Oh well. Some things are more important than other people’s opinions.

**Author's Note:**

> while i do love the canon pairings, i thought trying to get dot and jack together would be interesting, and, to be totally honest, half the time i wasn't a big fan of hugh constantly trying to hold dot back. and phryne just isn't the settling down sort, while jack is, and i don't think she should have to be. but damn if all their romantic tension and little moments aren't delicious. 
> 
> i hope you liked it!
> 
> you can follow me at: shanastoryteller.tumblr.com


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